Killer of Men (26 page)

Or maybe it is the will of the gods, as some men say. Or the logos seeking change, so that one man does not dominate others, or to effect some other change.

I was never a great man with a javelin. I’ve killed my share of men with spears, thrown and pushed, as they say, but that’s because the daimon in me doesn’t lose its skills in the press of bronze. In a contest, I can’t throw as well as other men, and that’s a fact.

But that day I threw the best spears of my life. My first throw did it – which god stood at my shoulder I don’t know, but I smelled jasmine and mint and I swear that it was Athena putting her hand under mine and lifting my spear. Other men matched my throw, and Cleisthenes beat it, the bastard. I threw twice more, and never came within a stride of my first throw.

I placed seventh. Cleisthenes won. But I placed in the top eight, and by the Chian rules I had won or placed in every contest, and no other man had done that. Cleisthenes argued that he had, but his grandfather overruled him, saying that he had failed to finish the two-stade run.

I had won. I couldn’t believe it.

I think my slavery really ended there, on that beach, just before the sun started to swoop for the sparkling blue sea. I wasn’t just free – I was a man who could win a contest with hundreds of other free men.

We Greeks love a contest, and we love a winner. They mobbed me, and I was kissed a little more than I liked and patted a little too much, but I didn’t care. They put a crown of olive leaves in my hair.

And then Lord Pelagius took me aside.

‘Listen, lad,’ he said. ‘You’re the winner – clear winner. No judge even needs to count.’

‘There was a goddess at my shoulder, sir,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘What a very proper thing to say! Who was your father?’

‘Technes of Green Plataea, lord.’ I bowed.

‘I gather you were a slave?’

‘I was taken,’ I said. ‘The family that had me – freed me.’

He nodded again. ‘A fine story. Damned fine. The way good people should act.’ He was an old aristocrat, and he had the best notions of how his class ought to behave. A few of them do.

The rest are rapists and tax-takers with pretty names and better armour.

At any rate, he put his arm around my shoulders. ‘Listen, lad. You asked to fight with the sword. You’re welcome to do it – we can all see you’re a trained man. But after winning today, no one – and I mean no one – will think you’re a shirker if you want to step aside.’

But, ignoring the hubris of it, and the sound of wings I might have heard, I shook my head. ‘I want to fight, lord.’

He smiled. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I can’t give you your prize yet. So go and armour up.’ He meant that all the prizes were given at sunset.

So I put on my old leather spolas, not a tenth as glorious – or protecting – as the scale shirt I was so soon to own. I put my aspis on my arm and my crude, cheap and cheerful helmet on my head, picked up my meat-cleaver sword and went down to the lists.

In those days, we took wands – willow or linden, usually – and planted them at the four corners of the lists, and then we fought to the first cut. Men died from time to time, but most men were careful, and few fought all out in the lists.

Calchas had told me about such fighting, back on Cithaeron by the shrine of the hero, and I had thought that it sounded like the Trojan War. Here I was, five years later, standing by a row of black ships on a beach with a blade in my hand and the weight of my bronze helmet pressing down on my nose. While I listened to the judges caution us against using our full strength, my heart sang inside me – freedom and victory in games are a heady mix, like wine and poppy juice. The stars were out, although the sun hadn’t set. There were only eight of us to fight – which, had I thought of it, might have made me wonder about our army.

Yet I tell this badly. I wanted to talk to the past. I wanted to tell the boy in the olive grove, and the slave boy in the pit, that there was this at the end of the road – that someday I’d stand on the sand, a hero.

Who knows? Heraclitus says that time is a river, and you only dip your toe once. But maybe you can skip a stone, too. I only know that the boy in the olive grove and the boy in the slave pit made it to be the victor on the beach.

You don’t understand. Perhaps just as well. And just as well that the victor on the beach didn’t know what was to come, either.

Count no man happy until he is dead.

We paired off, and I was up against a Chian. We exchanged names, but I’ve forgotten his. I was too inexperienced to be afraid, and too eager to show my skill.

We circled for a while. No man with steel in his hand lurches into a fight without feeling his opponent. It’s like foreplay with a beautiful woman. Well, it’s not, actually. But there are a few things in common, and I like making your friend blush. Young lady, if you turn that colour every time I mention sex, we’ll be good friends. What’s your name? Ligeia? How fitting.

At any rate, we circled, and then we started to make jabs at each other’s shields. It is hard to hit a man who has an aspis, when all you have is a short sword. The only targets are his thighs, his ankles and his sword arm. In a contest, his head is out of the question. Bad form. Which is funny, because in a real combat, that’s what you go for.

I became bored with circling and tapping shields. I shuffled forward, shield foot first, and then I cut at his shield, stepped in hard with my back foot and cut back – the ‘Harmodius blow’ they call it in Athens – and caught him just above the greave. A nice cut and no real harm.

I think I made him happy – he was out with honour.

Men are fools. Combat is not for honour. I hadn’t learned that lesson yet, but I almost knew it, and I was annoyed with him, that he’d wasted my time and energy.

I was the first to finish, and I watched the others fight. Cleisthenes had his broken hand inside his aspis, and he was hammering his opponent, an older Athenian who was angered and afraid of Cleisthenes’ bullying, hammering attacks that were well beyond the spirit of the contest. Cleisthenes was swinging as hard as he could, chopping his opponent’s shield with his heavy sword, a curved
kopis
or
falcata
, depending where you’re from, a weapon like an axe with a sword blade attached.

Another Athenian effortlessly dispatched his man after a long shuffle in a circle. I saw him do it. He faked a cut to the man’s head and tagged his thigh under the rim of his shield – perfect coordination, perfect control. He was one of their noblemen. He was fast and elegant and had better armour than anyone else, including bronze on his thighs and upper arms.

It was good that I saw him, because he was my next opponent. The light was starting to go, and we fought between two bonfires. He smiled at me – he had an Attic helmet with spring-loaded cheekpieces, and as soon as I saw it, I knew my father had made it. I held up my hand to him.

‘My father made that, sir,’ I said, pointing at the helmet.

He took it off. ‘You’re a son of Technes, the smith of Plataea who fell in Euboea?’ he asked.

‘I am, sir.’ I bowed.

He returned my bow, although he was a child of the gods, the son of the greatest family in Athens. ‘I am Aristides,’ he said, ‘of the Antiochae.’

I nodded. ‘I am Arimnestos of the Corvaxae,’ I said, ‘of green Plataea where Leitos has his shrine.’

He grinned. He liked that I could play the game. Then he put his helmet back on and I pulled mine down, and we faced off.

The Chians cheered us, because we were both foreigners. Aristides was probably the best-known man in the fleet, while I had just won the athletics, and that made it a good-natured match with lots of cheering. I could hear Melaina’s clear soprano and her brother’s bass.

And then they all went away, and I was alone on the sand with a deadly opponent. He moved the way a woman dances, and I admired him even as I tracked his motion.

As far as I was concerned, he was beautiful, but he put too much energy into it. That is, he looked wonderful – and he was good, very good, a true killer. But he also played to the crowd.

He had not, on the other hand, run several stades and wrestled.

Early on, he came at me with his kill shot. All swordsmen have one – a simple combination they have mastered, that can get the fight over in a hurry. Listen – if you live past a man’s kill shot, it’s a whole different fight. But most men go down, in sport or play or on a blood-spattered deck. Calchas taught me that, and every sword-fighter in Ephesus said the same.

I didn’t buy the feint to my head and my shield caught his blow to my thigh, then I cut back at his arm and my blade
ticked
against his arm guard.

He nodded at me as we drew apart – acknowledgement that I’d hit him. Then we circled for a long, long time, until the crowd was silent. I wasn’t going after him. He was better than me. And he wasn’t in a hurry. And, frankly, I knew he was the best man I’d ever faced – better than Cyrus or Pharnakes, even.

Twice, we went in. The first time, he came forward gracefully – and fooled me, his swaying approach a trick as he darted to the right and his blade shot out in a cut to my right hip, of all unlikely targets.

I parried the blow on my blade and hammered my aspis into his. I cleared my weapon and tried to reach under his shield, but he didn’t allow it, and we were kneeling in the sand, shield to shield, pushing. The crowd roared but the judges separated us.

The second time, I saw him stumble. It was dark now; the fires gave unsteady light and the helmets didn’t help. But before my attack was even fully developed, he had his feet under him. He cut low and then high, and our blades rang together, and we
both
punched with our shields, leaning our shoulders into the push, and our blades licked out and we both rolled left and broke apart. The ocean cold of his blade had passed across my sword arm and my blade had
ticked
against his thigh armour.

I raised my blade for a halt. ‘He touched me,’ I said. I can be an honourable man.

But his blade had been flat on, and Athena was by me, and when the judges looked, there was no blood.

Stephanos gave me a drink of wine while the judges looked at my opponent. Archi pointed at him.

‘Back of his knees, brother,’ he said. He’d never called me brother before, and it was the warmest praise of the day.

‘Cleisthenes hurt his last man,’ Stephanos said. ‘He’ll face the winner here but his grandfather is mad as fury. The man he cut is bad.’

Cleisthenes came and started to catcall. He was a rude fuck, and while other men cheered, he jeered. My blood started to rise.

I decided to go for the Athenian’s knee. Archi was dead right – when you’re in the fight you don’t always see. He was a tall man and the back of his knee was the best unarmoured target on him.

He went for his kill shot again. I think he felt that he hadn’t got it off perfectly the first time. But as soon as he started, I knew the combination. I knelt, ignoring the head feint, and snapped my wrist in a long cut against the back of his left knee while his sword
cracked
on to my shield and bounced up on to my helmet – I’d knelt too low. The blow was hard – not as well pulled as his first, and I fell sideways with a bump on my scalp where my helmet turned the blow but not all of it.

He gave me a hand up and apologized.

I pointed my heavy blade at the black line of blood running down the back of his greaves.

‘By Athena!’ he said. ‘Well cut, Plataean.’

Men cheered, but Cleisthenes jeered again, calling us pansies. And then he insisted on fighting, right there.

‘I want this,’ he said. ‘Unless you’re afraid.’ And closer up, ‘I’m going to hurt you.’

His grandfather tried to stop it. But the other judges said there was enough light, and I was an arse, and simply insisted I’d fight.

‘You’re a fucking slave,’ he said, and he grinned. ‘I own you already. Slaves always fear men like me – real men. Do you feel the fear, boy?’

The thing I hated was that of course I
did
feel the fear. I did fear men like him – big, brutal men who wanted to inflict pain. And my fear made me hate him, and the daimon came.

Suddenly I was as cool as if I had bathed in the sea.

When we came together, I already knew how I would fight, and what I would do. The daimon was in me, and I give no quarter then. And truly, I have done shameful things, but this was hardly one of them. He was an evil bastard, and he earned his way to Tartarus all the way.

But I regret – some of it.

As soon as his grandfather gave the word, he came at me, his sword high, and smashed it into my shield.

He cut at the top, his tactic simple. He would cut the bronze band that held the rim in five or ten strokes, and then start chopping the shield until he broke my arm or cut my shield arm. It was a brutal technique, and he was a brutal man.

I ducked and dodged. I wanted him contemptuous and hurried.

He was
easy
.

He laughed and spat and chased me, landing a blow or two on the shield face. He finally stopped.

‘Fucking coward, stand and fight!’ he yelled.